A Look Inside China’s Futuristic Library

Dutch architecture firm MVRDV worked with the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute (TUPDI) to design a massive new library in Tianjin, China.

Built as part of the city’s Binhai Cultural Center and part of a larger urban plan to build a cultural district, the library is 362,744 square feet in size.

Its rectilinear outer envelope is defined by its topographic interior atrium, which is centered by a spherical, mirrored auditorium called the “Eye of Binhai.”

“The Eye is the centre of the library,” MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas said. “It hollows out the building and creates, out of bookshelves, an environment to sit, to read, to hang out, to climb and to access, to create an organic social space. In its heart is the auditorium which mirrors the environment, giving a 360-degree panorama of the space inside; a truly reflective and pensive environment.”